House Majority Leader Tom Delay, credited with strengthening is party’s hand in Congress and persuading his caucus to protect his status as leader even if he is indicted, seems to recognize that his latest power play may be too much. Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas) recently floated a proposal to uproot the jurisdictions of Appropriations subcommittees and reduce their number from 13 to 10, which would remove gavels from three of the panels’ powerful chairmen, known as cardinals.

Delay’s proposal is not getting a welcome reception from the cardinals themselves, or the Senate leaders. Delay’s moves demonstrate the degree to which he is exerting power in his chamber, and he is clearly positioning for advantage in what is expected to be a shake-up among appropriators in any event.

Currently Republican term limit rules require both House and Senate chairmen to step down at the end of this year. In the House, that will mean a new chairman beholden to the GOP leaders who will select him. In the Senate, Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) is slated to resist the kinds of changes Delay is seeking.

In Rep. Delay’s proposal, he recommends completely unraveling the subcommittee jurisdictions, which in the same bill often pair unrelated agencies, requiring them to compete for limited funding. The Commerce, Justice and State Departments for example, are funded by one subcommittee, while veterans’ affairs, housing, space and environmental programs are mixed together in another bill known as VA-HUD. The jurisdictions have stayed essentially the same for decades. Difficult trade-offs occur because each subcommittee is given a sum of money to divide up, so that awarding budget increases to veterans’ programs, for example, comes at a cost to the budget of NASA, the EPA, or the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Delay wants to replace these subcommittees with others more suited to GOP control. For example, under his plan the Regulatory Agencies Subcommittee would have jurisdiction over such agencies as OSHA, while another would cluster funding for Congress, the White House and the Judiciary. The idea is that certain bills would represent GOP priorities while others would focus on Democratic priorities such as public housing.

There are three candidates to succeed C.W. Bill Young (R-Florida) as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, they include: Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-California) and Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Kentucky). The race has put House leaders in a position to exact promises of fealty greater than that demonstrated by Young.

Regula has the most seniority of the candidates. He received accolades for taking on Democrats, who in 2003 opposed the fiscal 2004 Labor-HHS spending bill for insufficiently funding education programs. Regula retaliated by denying all requests for Democratic earmarks, and this year, Democrats voted for all appropriations bills in large numbers.

Next in seniority is Lewis, who appears to have the most support on the Appropriations panel. However, with the Ways and Means, Rules, Armed Services, Homeland Security and Resources panels also headed by fellow Californians, geographical considerations may work against Lewis.

Rogers chairs the Homeland Security Subcommittee and promises to implement tight budgets expected in the next few years. Sources on the Hill say there is no compelling reason to vault Rogers ahead of his more senior rivals.